Around 8,000 more cases were seen in the daily spike as 63,509 fresh infections were reported in 24 hours after Tuesday's 55,342, taking the total Covid tally to 72,39,389 on Wednesday.

After Tuesday's single-day spike created a sense of a downward trend, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) gave a jolt to general expectation as ICMR DG Balram Bhargava informed that so far there has been three cases of re-infection of Covid-19 identified in India -- two in Mumbai and one in Ahmedabad.

There were 730 deaths in one day taking the overall toll to 1,10,586.

Out of the total cases, 8,26,876 are currently active, 63,01,927 have been discharged as India showed an indication of declining average daily cases for the past five weeks.

While the recovery rate stands at 87.05 per cent, the fatality rate is 1.53 per cent, the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.

Three states account for maximum caseload in the country -- besides Maharashtra which continues to be the worst-hit with a total of 15,43,837 cases including 40,701 deaths; it is Karnataka and Kerala. In fact Kerala, which till two weeks back, did not feature in the top list -- is now in the third spot.

It was after nearly two months that the daily spike had dropped below 60,000 on Tuesday. For the fifth day in a row, the active cases remained below 9 lakh, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare data showed. The fatalities have come down below 1,000 for 10 straight days. India had recorded a spike of 97,894 cases on September 17.

According to the data from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India conducted 11,45,015 sample tests in a single day on Tuesday, taking the total number of samples tested so far to 9,00,90,122.
(IANS)